Shards of a Maritime Mirror
by x-little-mouse-x
Summary: A young woman's recurring nightmares of a sinking luxury ocean liner, fear of the ocean and large bodies below and above it, visits from a strange spirit, and encounters with an odd, knowing artist reveal truths of her past she may not be ready to face.


Chapter 1: The Nightmares

_A stretch of black water with no shore to tame its borders, tension jumping with the dim moonlight as it bounces with the inconsistencies of the waves. Aside from the faint slurping of disturbed water, there is only silence, haunting and desolate. And then, new elements to the scene emerge. First, there are new sounds, echoing harshly against the emptiness. Where are the physical structures from which the sound could possibly reverberate? In this blur of deep, ominous blue there is nothing for miles… and then in the garbled, blended sounds getting louder by the second, the first piercing shriek that accompanies the fear of an oncoming death._

_Suddenly the screams are all I can understand in the horror._

_It's not even a picture anymore… like the sound became something tangible, something that could replace even the ghastly image of an empty ocean under an unforgiving night sky. Bodies are everywhere, bobbing like little nothings against the vastness of the sea. I can feel the ice on their skin as they freeze in the deadly waters, cast in the shadow of a titanic body in the water, something that for a brief moment seems to measure up to the hopeless, never ending stretch of icy hell. An ocean liner? Perhaps it is strong enough to save them…_

_No, the ocean is defeating it, sucking it under, swallowing the poor victims with it… _

_There is no hope._

Scarlet Westbrook's panicked blue eyes opened to take in the bleak, gray light of the morning. She couldn't get the image out of her head, those people desperately wading in the ocean alongside a sinking ship. It took her a moment to realize she must have been hyperventilating, as she was lightheaded and frantic. She reached for the covers to throw them aside, and was shocked to find her fingers had stiffened from the lack of oxygen.

Her icy toes grabbed at the floorboards of her small attic bedroom, and with the same franticness she flew through the door – neglecting her warm robe - down to the bathroom on the second level of her maritime home in Depoe Bay, Oregon. Once there, the salty air that leaked through the small westward window greeting the Pacific Ocean gave her no comfort as she recalled the ghastly pictures from the long unwelcome nightmare. Still fuzzy from sleep but too charged with adrenaline from the fear, she turned on the shower and jumped in desperately, letting the brief cold shock her body to reality.

For years Scarlet had been suffering recurring nightmares of one single theme, but they were not quite the same each time. Each horrendous performance in her sleeping mind was like a sitcom of horror based on one plot: the terror and despair of sinking on a massive ocean liner. Sometimes she was on the ship dining with people of fine quality, feeling and "seeing," in that hazy dreamlike way, the shudder of impact, terrifying screams always to follow. Other times it was as this past night, watching the ship sink while bobbing in the water with the screams. And other times still she was holding tight to the stern of the ship with a faceless man, perched vertical as the hellish waters sucked her straight down, closer to the swirling faces of death. Scarlet thought to herself often that it was strange that a ship would sink vertically, and couldn't very well imagine it happening in real life.

Her grandfather, Andrew Westbrook, a part-time security guard at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York, was an expert on ships, and had assisted in the construction of carriers and battleships before the yard was closed in 1966. Now that the yard was an industrial park and now that he was "supposedly" retired, he chose to make money on the side as a security guard of sorts, even in his old age, as a way to cling to his younger days when he felt the power and pride of being a part of the construction of the ships in his lifetime. (Scarlet assumed now that the city had allowed him the position more as a kind gesture of respect to a workman of the yard in its prime rather than as a practical job.)

Scarlet had picked up ship-related knowledge randomly throughout her childhood during his holiday visits, and still to this day she wished that she hadn't. Visualizing the technicalities of a ship sinking was at the bottom of her interest list. As the water from the shower washed away the night prior, her only feeling of relief in recalling her grandfather, thought she loved him very much, was that he was on the other side of the country, unable to plague her with his ship stories on a regular basis.

As Scarlet grew up and as her nightmares became well known throughout her family, Andrew knew not to tell her the stories of sunken ships that interested her younger brother, Gordon. Even with this gesture of courtesy, she would occasionally overhear such things passing between rooms at night, (bathroom trips, usually,) when everyone assumed her to be asleep, as she had never liked to stay up late. Though she had a very well-grounded and loving childhood, the images of those stories could easily count as trauma for her for her nightmares; a six year old doesn't exactly know what to make of dreams involving being sucked under water on such a huge hunk of metal.

Scarlet stepped out of the shower realizing she hadn't even bothered to wash her hair. In fact, all she had done really was stand there as the water poured over her like it was all a decontamination process.

As she wrapped a clean white towel around her, the cold finally getting to her, she considered her grandfather for a moment. Ever since the death of her father, Bryan Westbrook, he had always been willing to leave his beloved former shipyard to move to Depoe Bay to take care of her and her brother, as well as her mother, Gloria. However, Gloria despised the man, for reasons Scarlet never pretended to understand. The source of Gloria and Andrew's tension was treated as a forbidden subject, but Scarlet's curiosity and impossible desire to dissolve it was there nonetheless. She kept her questions to herself, especially during the holiday visits when it is was clear her grandfather was only there for her and Gordon, judging by the sudden façade her mother seemed to employ. Scarlet never noticed the thickness in the air during the holidays until she was older.

Scarlet pushed the thought out of her mind, as it was unsettling. Though it was better than her nightmare, she would have preferred something a bit easier in which to submerge her thoughts.

As cold as she felt inside the small bathroom, once she opened the door the drastic temperature difference made her appreciate the unnoticed warmth that had accumulated from the steam of her shower. She sucked in a breath and hurried up the small staircase to her little room.

As Scarlet hustled to get into her robe and dry her deep, rich red hair, she began to think about the priorities of the day. Gordon was going to be out all day taking a double workload on the boats leading the deep sea fishing trips that were popular in the town, so it was her responsibility to get the kitchen in shape for when Gloria came home. Her mother owned a souvenir shop downtown, and so her days were always spent in her store, filled with pirate memorabilia, various items crafted from shells, general Oregon Coast touristy items of popularity, including tokens of Keiko, the orca whale star of the movie Free Willy, who had once resided at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, just one town south… Gloria was often home late, although her shop closed at five o'clock like most shops. She was always buried in her work, somehow creating extremely involved projects out of the comparatively simple job it was. Scarlet suspected, now that she was a teenager, that Gloria distracted herself with work to avoid things Scarlet had no business asking about. The secrets that littered her family had always been there in one form or another. Scarlet had learned to accept this fact and pass it off as regular daily life. Matters between family members were no concern of hers or of Gordon's.

Scarlet turned away from the thought of her family's preference for secrecy to glance out her circular window – her favorite aspect of her quaint little tower – at the ocean. How lucky she felt that her family had inherited this place from her great-grandmother, Victoria Sears, for if they hadn't, how could Scarlet survive? Save her fear of sinking ships and large bodies under the vast, open waters in general, the mystery and wonder of it from the shore captivated her with such intensity that it felt strangely a part of her. Many people she had known or spoken to growing up, all who had lived on the coast their entire lives as she had, admitted to feeling the soothing but eerie power of the ocean and its pull on their being.

Looking away, Scarlet decided the kitchen could be done last minute, and considered other things that could be taken care of that day. She knew that she had to study for her Calculus exam, but luckily it was Saturday. She had Sunday to focus on studies. Saturdays were her "miscellaneous" days. Her cell phone's classy, fluty ringtone chimed as she considered the options, and "Amber C" blinked from the small screen.

"Hello?" Scarlet answered, taking out a scrunchie from the top drawer of her dresser to loosely pull back her thick hair, which was naturally wavy and utterly unmanageable.

"Hey Scarlet, it's Amber," the cheery bird voice announced through the small speaker.

"Yes, as my caller ID says."

"Hey, Sara just called me a few moments ago – the dork – she was all sorts of giggly as she was talking," Amber chattered. Scarlet was half paying attention while she pulled a burgundy turtleneck from the second drawer and searched for a pair of jeans that did not have any holes in the knee. Scarlet tuned in to Amber again at the sound of "…some sort of a treasure hunt…"

"Hey, could you say that again? The phone cut out a second," Scarlet lied. She often had to use that excuse to justify her inability to pay attention to Amber's easily tiresome voice.

"Sure, sure. Yeah, Sara is in a parking lot out by Agate Beach in Newport and she said she hid a box of 'treasure' for your birthday. She told me to call you so we could all go on this treasure hunt or something. Wanna go? Sounds kinda silly, but hey we can be kids again for a few hours, right?"

Scarlet smiled softly at the memory. Sara always instigated "treasure hunts" in their childhood. Her mind was filled with images of the three of them, "The Pirates Three," as Amber's mother called them, wandering along the many beaches of the Newport - Depoe Bay - Lincoln City area. Climbing up and through the cliffs shin high in orange dirt, shuffling under bushes and sticking their heads down little "caves" in the boulders, planting a homemade pirate flag at the highest platform of the cliff, pretending it was their pirate ship…

As the warmth of the memories faded in the brief seconds she thought of them, she suddenly realized it _was _her birthday. _Funny, I was so excited about it yesterday, I couldn't have forgotten so quickly, _she thought to herself. _Well, I guess I'm seventeen then. _She momentarily felt sad for the departure of her year of being "sweet sixteen."

"That sounds quite silly, but I'm in," Scarlet said, laughing fondly. "She's so strange, but she's a sweetheart. We should throw her a huge surprise party for her birthday next month."

"I know, right? But she's so insistent on pulling these surprises out of nowhere, y'know? She's such a weirdo about anyone doing things for her. Dork. Anyway so she wants to like, meet up at noon 'on the dot,' and I quote her there. She's being so picky about punctuality lately. It's her new thing. Somehow she's into this whole 'gotta organize every second of my day' thing going on. And on top of that…"

Scarlet tuned out again. She pulled her binder out of her backpack, laying neatly in the farthest corner of the room by her bookshelves, and shuffled through her Calculus notes absentmindedly. She had no intention of exerting brain power on it, but it kept her from getting impatient with Amber's hyper chatter.

"…Anyway I'm rambling. My mom is gonna drive us. See you at ten thirty or something?"

Scarlet cocked her head to the side in confusion. "Ten thirty? Don't you think that's a little early? Sure we would need time to get to Newport, but it only takes a half hour or so. We'd be far too early, don't you think, especially if Sara's waiting in a parking lot there?"

"Oh Sara will find something to do. She knows my mom has errands to run so since we're hitching a ride with her we'd have to just kinda hang a while," Amber said in a different tone, sounding rushed even for her. Scarlet's eyebrow rose in suspicion, and she could easily predict the presence of a plan in Amber's head to "surprise" her. It was hard sometimes to act surprised with Amber when she made it so obvious.

"Alright, that's fine with me then," she replied, shoving her feet into her favorite pair of red "hiking" boots. They were more like what a model would wear down a catwalk if she were modeling a women's seasonal hiking collection. She joked with herself that she was the Dorothy of the casual outdoors.

"You might wanna bring some sort of a fleece or something, it's really windy out today, but thank god the sun is coming out," Amber chimed. Scarlet felt Amber wasn't quite fit for the overcast, windy atmosphere that was the Oregon Coast. She was more of a California sun type.

"Thanks for the warning," Scarlet replied monotonously, hardly paying attention by now. She was eager to get off the phone with Amber. It was much easier to tolerate her in person, when her vivid hazel eyes and amiable smile could counteract her squealing soprano voice; somehow, her physical presence inadvertently projected her constantly happy mood on to others.

After an irritatingly prolonged goodbye, Scarlet shut her phone eagerly and shoved it in the pocket of her faded blue jeans. She inspected the knees to double check for holes. She found none, but she noted the thinness of the fabric on the left knee, and made it a point to remember to buy another new pair for when these finally ripped.

And with a quick check in the full-length mirror, she was out her door, down the first, then second set of stairs, and through the front door to wait for Amber on the doorstep.


End file.
